“It is one thing to acknowledge enteral ignorance, for the world is vaster than the mind. It’s another to recognize one does not yet know all they’re meant to.” – Old Sean
The Carolinas
While a significant portion of my trip through the Eastern portion of the US is a camping trip, the rest of the time is spent visiting friends and family in a part of the world I rarely visit.
The first social call, naturally, was for family. My cousins, aunt, uncle and grandmother along with a cousin’s recent fiancé all met at Top Golf in Raleigh ,North Carolina, where I learned that golf skills don’t at all improve with a complete lack of practice.
The next day was spent in perpetual sleepiness, eating as much as I could manage, taking short walks around the neighborhood and checking out my cousins’ new living arrangements. There were beers in front of basketball nets, cookies and pie, dogs and chirping birds and a dozen other things brought on in the sleepiness in life. We celebrated mother’s day and it was lovely.
Country Roads
I finally went on north the following morning, angling towards where I was due to meet another friend of mine in the Virginia mountains. Per my uncle’s advice, I took a series of backroads on my way north, dodging along Route 29 as I slowly went North. The greenery was astounding the entire trip and vast patches of treeless lands were absolutely caked in flowers.
My drive was easy and slow. I stopped at a place called the Cavalier Store and old-school, cash-only burger joint with a rainbow of license plates bolted to the ceiling. I spent most of my day resting in Lynchburg, not in the slightest hurry anywhere.
The US is an odd paradox.
If anyone wants to experience it, the only proper method is through long, meandering tours along endless backroads, stopping in the countryside and finding the odd corners of the American road system.
By the same token, however, the states are simply too large to do that effectively. A destination is needed, lest the endless spirals in state interiors continue to whirl inward until the driver and vehicle vanish, like a stone in the river.
Recollections of Lynchburg
This route into Lynchburg and further north was my spiral, and it made me wish I had budgeted even further time for wandering.
But with what limited minutes I had, I drove slowly beside legions of colonial-styled houses of brick and white pillars. I ducked into Riverside Park, where I took green foot-trails in steady, steep loops, right past old train tracks and muddy rivers.
Eventually, I drove downtown, where I found fields of clover, got brushed by intermitted drizzles and found battle lines that once defined the American Civil War. Lynchburg is half run down and half beautiful, with walls of ivy and ragged skate parks near the bank. There are great steeples of churches leaping up at odd intervals and stairways leading to towering art hills. A fountain on a Stonehenge-like obelisk fires a jet of water back into the nearby river.
Next, I made an entirely unplanned detour, veering down dirt and gravel roads with blue-tinged mountains rolling up against one another in the distance. The road rolled gently and buildings around here were snugly constructed, with colorful trimming and goats waggling horned heads in front lawns.
Everything was green to the point of blinding, with the exception of the occasional rusted vehicle left artfully decaying near a road with inexplicable For Sale signs propped in their windows.
Tourism Farming
The initial reason for my detour was to seek out the admittedly enticing strawberry farm, known as Seamans’ Orchard Inc. I finally rolled up to the proper location, grabbed a green picking basket and stuffed myself full of a lunch of strawberries and the local ice cream.
Neat rows of lush strawberry plants covered an entire mountainside, and further down the valley was green waves of grass that moved in classic emerald ripples. White horses stood stock still in the wind and walls penning them were of brick or cobbled white stone. Graves appeared as quickly as towns under shaded areas and tamed wilderness is the most definitive feature of this part of the world.
Entry of Staunton
I made additional stops at a series of antique shops for snacks, but eventually rolled into Staunton, Virginia, where I was due to meet a friend the following day. Here, I walked around the old town area briefly for dinner at Firkin Pie Company and eventually drove to Natural Chimneys Park to hike around the raggedly rising stone pillars half submerged in mountain earth.
My night, however, was not far off. I wandered into George Washington and Jefferson National Forest. The road out this direction was bare of any other vehicles on a weekday, and I climbed slowly into the lower mountains.
There, I pitched camp, turning the car off the side of the road and quickly found a spot with a large log and firepit available. My night was spent reading books on my well-charged Kindle and catching up on my writing and notes. Throughout the night, a great horned own perched on my large log and promptly began hooting throughout the night, his voice echoing eerily, oft answered from the opposite side of the mountain. I listened from dusk until midnight before finally rolling over on my good ear, muffling the twilight announcements out.
The next morning, I returned into town, walking around Staunton. It’s a gorgeous little brick and motor town, with run-down cabooses perched on upper city rail lines, tiny shops full of unique goods and an endless number of churches.
I met my friend Merm here, who I last saw in Charlotte, NC and China prior to that. We ended up gift shopping for a ridiculous number of oddities, including green army men doing yoga, classic mugs, bird suction cups for windows and a few comic books.
A Hack and a Pipeline
Finally, we both departed Staunton heading opposite directions. I shot east while Merm drove south, passing me a carrot to enjoy during my drive.
I was aiming for Richmond, Virginia to visit my friend Daniela from Columbia and my Aunt in Spotsylvania. However, as I drove along, there was a stunning increase in gas stations that were shut down.
Unbeknownst to me, there had been a Russian hacker attack that had shut down a major US pipeline. I began eyeing my own meter warily, before finally pulling into a gas station where every pump was closed.
The man at the counter was a pinnacle stereotype of southern boonies accents, talking in a rapid fire candace of half-formed words and quarter comprehensible thoughts.
“Hey, sir, how you doing? What’s with all the closed gas pumps?”
“Eh, yeah, yup, gas pumps, they all shut down, shut down, yeah, there was, yeah, was a hack hacker and they yup, they did shut the pipe down, yup.”
“Oh, dang. Do you know where I can get some gas? I need to make it to my aunt’s in Richmond today.”
“Sure, yup, yeah, sure, I know, I got a spot for yuh, yeah. Ye see, yer gonna go this road down this road and take a right at the church and then around the churches, yuh see, yeah, round that, there’s a rock road, road with gravel, no cement, yup. Ye keep up, ye keep going till ye see a red sign, wooden sign and that’s not it. Yeah, that’s not it, that’s shut down. But ye keep going and goin’ just straight, yup, yeah, there’s another one that’s the same, another sign like fifteen minutes, maybe fifteen minutes and bang, there’s some gas right there. Nobody, nobody I bet, nobody knows ’bout this one, so yeah, yup, bet there’s gas right there.”
Offshoot Directions
When I asked for him to point out the location on my map (Google maps) he dove under the country and rapidly unfolded a local road map of the area.
Say what you will, but he was helpful as possible and he was right. Half an hour later I was cruising towards Richmond on a full tank with enough gas to get me all the way to New York a few days later.
I made my next very welcome stop in Richmond to meet Daniela, where we took a walk around her extremely posh neighborhood. After saying farewell, I finally reached my aunt’s house, where I ate all the food, bumbled around and promptly started snoring.
The next leg of my journey was to DC. The last time I had been there, the city had been quiet and dull. It was the middle of a governmental shut down in the center of Trump’s tumultuous presidency. Aside from some protests, the city had been a ghost town under a cloudy sky.
We’ll see how it’s doing in the latter stages of COVID.
Until then,
Best regards and excellent trails,
Old Sean
Written May 11th 2021
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The GoPro Hero Black is my go to Action camera. I’m not comfortable bringing my cell phone to many wet and rugged locations, so the GoPro does most of my photographic heavy-lifting. The only things I bring in my GoPro kit are the camera, a spare battery and the forehead mount. I upgrade my GoPro once every two years. It was particularly excellent to have during my aquatic tour of Belize.
